Striking rubbish collectors try to get out of ‘minimum services’
Lisbon seems set for a very stinky Christmas: rubbish collectors/ urban hygiene workers have called a strike between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve, and they are trying to get out of providing even ‘minimum services’.
In other words, nothing will get done over the festive period, if the bid for a judicial embargo on the provision of minimum services is successful.
Nuno Almeida, president of STML, the Lisbon Municipal Workers union, has told Lusa that the bid presented by STML and STAL (the national union of local administration workers) went into the Administrative Court of Lisbon today. It has “two aspects, one as a complaint (that the imposition of minimum services is ‘unfair’) and the other as an embargo. We do not know if the court will rule before the strike begins”, he added.
The arbitration panel of the Directorate-General for Public Administration and Employment (DGAEP) announced on Friday that there should be 71 garbage collection circuits on December 26, 27 and 28, involving 167 workers. This represents “around ⅓ of the work” that is carried out on a normal day, say unions, which clearly see this as ‘excessive’ in a strike situation.
Lisbon tends to be plagued by piles of rubbish building up over almost every festive period, so, in that context, Christmas 2024 looks set to carry on with the tradition. ND
Source material: LUSA
